Tuesday, 9 September 2014

The Most Important Book I Have Written...

Today's guest blog is by author Barbara Nadel. So far she has written sixteen books featuring Çetin İkmen,
a chain-smoking and hard-drinking detective based in Istanbul, four books featuring Francis Hancock an East End undertaker and two books in her Hakim and Arnold series.

As
authors we sometimes write books, or parts of books, that are personal or
important to us.There are places and
scenes in my books that can exert an emotional pull over me time and time again.My hope is that maybe my readers will feel
the same.Fortunately both my crime
series are set in places that I love, Newham in London and Istanbul, Turkey.My latest book, Poisoned Ground a Hakim and Arnold mystery set in Newham does
however have other, to me, even more important, resonance.

For
many years, both before and after I became a writer, I worked in psychiatric
hospitals and with mentally ill people in the community.My longest running job was as a patients
advocate in a large psychiatric institution just outside London.My duties were to represent the views, needs,
complaints, and compliments of patients both ‘formal’ (held under Section) and
‘informal’ or voluntary.I worked on
acute, chronic, and forensic wards and one of the most stressful jobs I had was
to represent forensic patients (those who had committed offences) at Mental
Health Tribunals where their continued incarceration would be discussed and
decided.I had to walk the often-thin
line between staff and patients, patients and their illnesses and patients and
everyone else.It probably goes without
saying that people with mental health problems are often disbelieved and
sometimes what they say is indeed ‘their illness talking’.But more often than not, it isn’t.In my experience it is dangerous to make
assumptions.

One
of our patients was always on about his relative who was a Hollywood movie star.It seemed very far-fetched even to me.Until the Hollywood star turned up and embraced
our patient.However, convincing the
hospital authorities that something similar (i.e. the truth) may be at play
when patients talked about abuse was another matter.That was like pushing treacle uphill.Because, unless the case was
patient-on-patient abuse, they didn’t want to know. Some members of staff were known for their
brutality and yet any accusations levelled against them were always refuted in
the strongest terms.I have been told,
gently, that I’m wrong about these people and, when I persisted, I have been
called a liar, aggressively, to my face.But to this day I stand by what my patients told me.Not only could I see their injuries, I also
have enormous faith in the idea that even the most delusional person knows when
he or she has been kicked.And this lack
of belief in the validity of statements made by the mentally ill is one of the
central themes of Poisoned Ground.

Total
institutions like psychiatric hospitals, are fertile breeding grounds for
rumour, supposition and, in some cases, abuse.All the usual things that are valuable on the outside are currency
inside too.Sex, drugs, booze, money.
Except that inside the atmosphere is more pressured and febrile and victims are
inclined to remain silent.So those with
ill intent can more easily exploit people supposedly under their care.They can also terrify other members of staff,
who then collude or look the other way.It
takes real guts to be a whistle blower in a total institution, which is
something the much-publicised Operation Yewtree is only now making plain.

Poisoned Ground is about what happens when this abuse is
systematised.And as more

actors are
dragged into a drama that everyone in the institution knows, on some level, is
happening, the more complex and more dangerous the situation becomes.This world, so familiar to me, is one into
which PI Mumtaz Hakim goes in search of a truth she has serious doubts about.Because you do.

Even
with her degree in psychology, Mumtaz, in common with most people, is more
likely to disbelieve than believe the stories she hears when she becomes a
volunteer advocate at Ilford Psychiatric Hospital.What’s more, she must wade through the
labyrinthine administration of an institution that’s gone bad, where people not
only get hurt, but sometimes die as well.And that has happened, and probably still does.

Stigma
has always been with us.If you label a
person or a group ‘wrong’ or ‘other’ and you are more powerful than they are,
you can do what you like with them.Look
at the Islamic State and the poor Yazidis and the Christians in Iraq.Some groups have always, and will always, be
targets for prejudice and discrimination.Not everyone knows that Hitler didn’t start his epic genocide with
Jewish people.First he targeted the
mentally ill.Nobody would care about
them.And he was right, they didn’t.In psychological terms this phenomenon is
known as the ‘latitude of acceptance’.It
works by normalising violence or discrimination against a group that is already
largely despised and then extends to others the state, political party or
institution wants to get rid of too.

Poisoned Ground is a crime novel written from the bottom of my
soul.Good people work in psychiatric
units.If I have any religion at all it
is the National Health Service, which has saved my life, and the Welfare State,
which has kept me off the streets.But
it only takes one bad person, particularly one in a position of power, to
produce a culture of fear and violence.However
delusional or ‘insane’ we may think someone, we have to start believing them
and acting on that belief.If we don’t,
then we get monsters like Jimmy Savile.Neither
celebrity nor expertise can excuse exploitation.Even the most highly qualified professional
needs to earn respect.Even the most
sainted celebrity.

The
action that takes place in Poisoned
Ground is the most threatening and dangerous that PIs Mumtaz Hakim and Lee
Arnold have faced so far.Not only are
they up against a conspiracy of frightening proportions but they also have to
confront fears, assumptions, and beliefs they didn’t even know they had.

You can find out more information about Barbara Nadel and her work on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @BarbaraNadel. Barbara also blogs over at International Crime Writers.com.

POISONED
GROUND by Barbara Nadel is published by Quercus on 11 September, hardback
£19.99.